Haven't we been there before?

Atrios links to David Roberts:

So I'm reading in Politico about Democratic fecklessness. (Yes, half my posts begin this way.) The problem is, whenever gas prices go up, Republicans benefit. They have a simple, powerful message ready to go, right off the shelf: drill here, drill now, pay less. Not enough drilling: that's why gas prices are high. Drilling more: that's how to lower them.

If a Republican is president, congressional Democrats and hippie enviro groups are blocking new drilling. If a Democrat is president, he and his cronies in Congress are pandering to liberals by blocking new drilling. It's the same every time, so it's all but inevitable that as gas prices rise they're trying to tag Obama the "pay more at the pump" president.

In response, Democrats ... flail. Every time. They say "we can't drill our way out," but they pretend like we can get out by punishing commodity speculators, opening the strategic reserve, or implementing "use it or lose it" gimmicks. They accept the fundamental falsehood at the root of the conservative position -- the way to lower gas prices is increase supply of U.S. oil -- and then reject the most obvious implication of that premise, i.e., we should drill more. [...]

So I'm reading in Politico about Democratic fecklessness. (Yes, half my posts begin this way.) The problem is, whenever gas prices go up, Republicans benefit. They have a simple, powerful message ready to go, right off the shelf: drill here, drill now, pay less. Not enough drilling: that's why gas prices are high. Drilling more: that's how to lower them.

If a Republican is president, congressional Democrats and hippie enviro groups are blocking new drilling. If a Democrat is president, he and his cronies in Congress are pandering to liberals by blocking new drilling. It's the same every time, so it's all but inevitable that as gas prices rise they're trying to tag Obama the "pay more at the pump" president.

In response, Democrats ... flail. Every time. They say "we can't drill our way out," but they pretend like we can get out by punishing commodity speculators, opening the strategic reserve, or implementing "use it or lose it" gimmicks. They accept the fundamental falsehood at the root of the conservative position -- the way to lower gas prices is increase supply of U.S. oil -- and then reject the most obvious implication of that premise, i.e., we should drill more.

Dave Roberts makes some very good points about oil and about policy and about messaging. Points that this blog has made for years (except for the times when I haven't been blogging).

The problem, however, is that we always come back to one unavoidable conundrum: reducing oil usage will require some sort of pain spread out over most of the population. Let's leave aside the crazies in this debate. We know who they are: the ones who are convinced that the US is sitting on top of a "sea of oil" that we only need to lower a straw into to suck the yummy milk shake out of the ground...they will never be convinced that this sea of oil lies in the Bakken and extracting it will be about as easy and cheap as extracting all the oil found under the surface of the moons of Endor. Also, there are a number of people on the right who believe that reducing our oil consumption by just a drop will lead to DOOM, where MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE as a combined result of smaller cars, higher food and heating prices and the collapse of the world economy. Most of the people who believe those things are pretty much never going to vote Democratic anyway, they're just too far gone in the fantasy land that oil money has created.

I, Atrios, Dave Roberts et al., I believe are talking about convincing "moderates" or "independents" by countering the DRILL BABY DRILL argument with something as possibly catching as "Yes we can." Those who can still be convinced by the truth. Those who occasionally read the Wall Street Journal and watch CNBC in the mornings thinking there might be some kernels of wisdom that the "people involved in money things" might have, but knowing deep down inside that it's all just a bunch of BS. For them, the question of "how are we going to reduce our oil consumption" is important. They believe that we've been trying that for decades and nothing government has offered as a solution has worked, ergo government is completely ineffective at steering the market towards lower oil consumption. Oh, and then there's Devon's paradox, which, like the Laffer curve, gets pulled out by so-called "free-market" (SCFM) libertarians on occasions like this.

For them, there are two choices: lower oil consumption by a combination of stricter CAFE standards, greater dependence on mass transit and higher gasoline taxes. The image that's conjured up by these three scenarios is thusly: smaller cars, dirty expensive transit running on someone else's schedule to places I don't want to go, and guaranteed pain at the pump. Or, we do nothing and at least we won't have to drive around like we're gay Frenchies and risk our wives dying in car crashes, and we don't need to sit next to sweaty undesirables, and, maybe most importantly, outside of the occasional nuisance of a gasoline price surge, we might get away with decades of damned cheap gasoline. Because we already have. And there's the promise that we just might get that yummy milkshake for a buck a gallon again one day...if only we give the oil companies a chance to DRILL BABY DRILL, who knows, they might actually find that sea of oil!

Any arguments to counter that don't ever seem to work: gas taxes can be raised moderately over time, be used to push the minimum income tax bracket well up into middle-class territory and provide funding for really cool and effective mass transit. Also, if industry knows it has 10 years to come up with fun and safe alternatives to the vehicles they offer the US market now they will have plenty of time to do so (hint: they're doing it in other countries). And, we don't really need people to go from a 10 mpg SUV to a plug-in electric hybrid...we just need them to switch to a 25 mpg SUV in the next 10 years or so. But there's fear.

So. Nice policy. Good message. How to make this work?